Posts Tagged ‘al qeada’

The consequences of the Syria fiasco

Wednesday, September 11th, 2013

The Syria farce played out with Obama’s speech last night. When you are a Democrat and are being ridiculed in left wing magazines, you are in trouble.

This brings up what will happen next. That will not include any surrender of Syrian WMD. The Syrians have been Soviet and Russian clients for many years. There is no chance that Putin will allow his client to be disarmed.

As Slate relates:

Kerry never thought that he was making a bold bid to avert military strikes that his president’s party and public had no interest in supporting. He simply suggested that if Bashar al-Assad handed all of his chemical weapons over in a week, that might stave off an impending U.S. attack—and of course, Assad wasn’t going to do that. The State Department rushed forward to clarify that Kerry wasn’t floating an actual proposal—he was just speaking rhetorically. You know, riffing. To say that the Obama administration is freelancing when it comes to foreign policy is an insult to freelancers.

Still, Vladimir Putin knows an opportunity when he sees it. The Kremlin pounced on Kerry’s diplomatic spitballing. So now, everyone—the French, the British, the Chinese, the Obama administration—is hoping that the Russians can craft a verifiable plan for Assad’s regime to hand over its chemical stockpile. For the West, a price can be exacted from Assad, while the dangerous unpredictability of military strikes can be avoided. Meanwhile, Russia and China can keep their man in Damascus.

What is the result ? Obama jumped at the chance to get off the weak limb he was astride.

But if your foreign policy has to be rescued by a dictator, you are doing it wrong. That’s where President Obama finds himself today. Putin is providing Obama an out he couldn’t find for himself.

This will not end well. In 1961, newly elected President John F Kennedy went to a summit with Nikita Kruschchev and was perceived by that dictator as a weakling. The result was Soviet missiles in Cuba and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Democrats, and even some credulous people of other parties, consider this was a victory for Kennedy. It wasn’t. It guaranteed Cuban communism for 50 years and US missiles were removed from Turkey. The two consequences were kept secret for the last 50 years. The Kennedy brothers then tried to get personal revenge on Castro and that effort may have blown back as the Kennedy assassination. None of this history suggests diplomatic skill.

What we see now is even less diplomatic skill, or even competence. Even Slate is unhappy with their president.

If Putin’s maneuver doesn’t pan out, Obama’s foreign policy will still likely fall victim to the vicissitudes of a dictator. Because one message is already clear in Damascus: The Obama administration will do everything in its power to do nothing at all. If Assad finds himself up against the wall, he will likely gas his fellow Syrians again. Maybe he will reduce the scale and scope, but it is doubtful that he will abandon the weapons. How will President Obama respond then? It is hard to say. Because no one knows what the president is doing. At least he has the element of surprise.

We will reap severe consequences from this disaster. And they will not be long in coming. Iran has been watching, no doubt with great interest. I have been despondent about the domestic consequences of Romney’s loss last fall. Now I have to face disastrous consequences in foreign policy. The next three years, and beyond if we are unlucky enough to see Hillary elected, will be the most dangerous time in our history since the Civil War.

Richard Fernandez sums it up well.

No, the man known as President Obama left the building after his Syria speech. What’s left in the White House is Barry Soetoro or whatever he goes by now: a shrunken, confused husk surrounded by court jesters, second-rate ideologues, and sycophants. And while it may be tempting to gloat at his reversal of fortune, the truth is that the collapse of the presidency represents the most dangerous moment in America since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

My only disagreement with him is that I think it’s worse than that.

Lessons from Boston

Saturday, April 20th, 2013

One jihadist is dead and the other is in custody. The younger bomber’s wounds have not been described so it is impossible to say if he will survive. The emergency is over and now it is time to think about why this happened. It now appears that both young men were long time residents of this country and, at least the younger was a citizen. Both had registered to vote, according to Nexis. The older brother was married with a child. His wife had converted to Islam and, according to reports yesterday, was wearing a full chador when she was taken from their home protesting about a male FBI agent handling a Muslim woman. She was lucky, as one commenter observed, that she was not strip searched as Chechen women have been prominent in terrorism cases in Russia, sometimes as suicide bombers wearing bomb belts.

The majority [of suicide bombers] are male, but a huge fraction — over 40 percent — are women. Although foreign suicide attackers are not unheard of in Chechnya, of the 42 for whom we can determine place of birth, 38 were from the Caucasus. Something is driving Chechen suicide bombers, but it is hardly global jihad.

I doubt the Times’ insistence on the absence of Islamist motives although Chechens have been at war with Russians for centuries. The suicide bomb is a common weapon for jihadists. The Palestinian “Mother of Martyrs” comes to mind.

Mariam Farhat, who said she wished she had 100 sons to die while attacking Israelis, died in a Gaza city hospital of health complications including lung ailments and kidney failure, health official Ashraf Al-Kidra said. She was 64.

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Boston and terrorism

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013

UPDATE: The FBI has now posted photos of two “persons of interest.” They are not the persons shown on the cover of the NY Post. They are high school runners and one has been identified and cleared.

The story and photos are now changed. The guys I showed earlier have been cleared. The official photos are below.

black hat

This is suspect #1, I call black hat. The other suspect is seen behind him.

white_hat3

Here is a closeup of his face and these two are described by the FBI as “armed and dangerous.” I wouldn’t be surprised to see more changes. The guy in the white hat was seen to set his backpack down by the Forum restaurant and walk down Boylston Street.

The Boston Marathon bombs have focused attention on a subject not popular with this administration. It would really be inconvenient if it was an act of an Islamic extremist, even a homegrown one. The bombs appear now to be based on black powder placed in metal pressure cookers which were also filled with shrapnel-like objects such as nails and ball bearings.

Boston Marathon Bomb Photos

This photo shows the remains of a blasted pressure cooker found at the scene.

These are not like the bombs used in the 2005 London bombings, which used organic peroxides, described by an alleged “terrorism expert” on CNN as “hydrogen peroxide.”

The London bombings were also suicide bombings and were followed by public claims of responsibility including video taped statements by the bombers made before the event. The Boston bombing did have some similarities in that backpacks were used and the bombs were placed to inflict maximum civilian casualties.

Pressure cookers were used as the containers and are well known for this use.

“A technique commonly taught in Afghan terrorist training camps is the use/conversion of pressure cookers into [improvised explosive devices],” the bulletin warned.

That [DHS] bulletin cited several plots from 2002 to 2004 to use pressure-cooker bombs in France, India and Nepal. But more recently there have been at least three other instances of would-be terrorists in the West, all of them Islamic radicals, in possession of pressure cookers for reasons that seemed not to involve having friends over for dinner.

So far they have been Islamic radicals.

One was an Army private linked to the 2009 Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, who had reportedly been taking bombmaking tips from al-Qaeda’s short-lived (literally) online magazine Inspire and had various weapons and explosives along with his cooking pot. (The magazine reportedly recommended pressure cookers as explosive devices.) A 2010 suicide bomber in Stockholm had rigged a pressure-cooker bomb that failed to detonate. And as a newer DHS warning about the kitchen devices noted, the failed 2010 SUV bomb in New York’s Times Square was a pressure-cooker device containing 120 firecrackers. The same DHS memo refers to a March 2010 bombing with a pressure cooker at a Western Christian aid agency in Pakistan that killed six people.

Certainly the army private associated with Hassan is a home grown terrorist, as was Hassan himself, although described by the Obama folks as “workplace violence,” the Fort Hood shootings were a domestic terror incident.

What are other possibilities ? The news media seems focussed on “white right wingers.” The effort to divert attention to the left’s enemies is pitiful but not surprising.

However, white male privilege means white men are not collectively denigrated/targeted for those shootings — even though most come at the hands of white dudes.

Likewise, in the context of terrorist attacks, such privilege means white non-Islamic terrorists are typically portrayed not as representative of whole groups or ideologies, but as “lone wolf” threats to be dealt with as isolated law enforcement matters.

The fact that there is a world-wide Islamic movement that uses terrorism and bombs might be a useful information if this writer were not so determined to deflect attention from it.

The Long Island Railroad shooting in 1993 was inconveniently committed by a black man but that fact has disappeared from the conversation about “gun violence” just as has the horrendous carnage in Chicago, all committed by young black men, been ignored. The fact that Ferguson, the LIRR shooter had racism as a motive has also disappeared. Notes in his pocket explained his reasons.

One of the notes referred to “racism by Caucasians and Uncle Tom Negroes”.

Timothy McVeigh was a “lone wolf” with the exception of his partner Terry Nichols and his motivation was the government misbehavior at Waco. For this reason he attacked a government building, even the one where offices used by federal officials linked to Waco were located.

An attack on the Texas IRS offices in 2010 raised hopes on the left that it could be blamed on angry white Tea Party members but the suicidal pilot was a lefty. His suicide note ended: The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.
–Joe Stack (1956-2010), 02/18/2010
He was also very critical of George W Bush.

The carnage created by the Boston bombs is a bit unusual as the effects seem to have been maximal near the ground. I have taken a counter-terrorism course and the course emphasized that shooting incidents can be dealt with by lying flat on the ground as bullets tend to ricochet upward. Bombs and grenade incidents should be avoided by crouching behind some shelter as the shrapnel tends to fly parallel to the ground. Lying flat is less effective in avoiding injury. Early reports note a large number of leg amputations and some graphic photos from the scene emphasize this.

The source of this act is not yet clear and it may take a while unless the perpetrator makes a mistake like Timothy McVeigh made with his missing license plate on the getaway car. It may be a domestic terrorist but is unlikely to be anything to do with “Tax Day” or other theories of left wingers trying to implicate the Tea Party or the political right. It could be a mental case like the Tucson shooter or the Newtown shooter but these cases are more likely to involve direct action, like shooting.

Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber obviously was disturbed but not psychotic. His bombings were committed for a clear purpose and he was able to continue undiscovered for years.

From 1978 to 1995, Kaczynski sent 16 bombs to targets including universities and airlines, killing three people and injuring 23.

He was finally caught only because his brother recognized the rhetoric in a letter published by the New York Times. Kaczynski’s victims followed a pattern of technology and industry including an airliner, that fortunately involved a failed detonation. This Boston bomb seems to be more a random attack and the motive may be more difficult to identify unless the bomber is caught.

Iran may have the bomb

Tuesday, March 5th, 2013

A report suggests that the most recent North Korea nuclear test, which used Uranium, not Plutonium as in their others, may have been the Iranian bomb.

the RAND Corporation reports that the third North Korean nuclear test appears to many experts to be fundamentally different from its previous two efforts. North Korea’s first tests used plutonium to trigger the nuclear explosion. This one, according to some atmospheric tests, likely used highly enriched uranium, exactly the form of nuclear weapon pursued by Iran.

The report is not that positive about the weapon type.

Key aspects of North Korea’s third nuclear weapon test, carried out on Tuesday, remain unknown. We do not know whether it was a test of a plutonium or highly enriched uranium weapon, though many experts suspect the latter.

The report is hardly definitive but it would not be a surprise if Iran has pushed through to a success in its program, unencumbered by any serious US opposition. Still, there is some serious concern.

The question is whether the weapon North Korea tested this month was its own, Iran’s or a joint project. A senior U.S. official told The New York Times, “It’s very possible that the North Koreans are testing for two countries.” It would be foolish for Iran to test a nuclear weapon on its own soil. Nuclear weapons cannot be detonated in secret; they leave unique seismic markers that can be traced back to their source. An in-country test would simply confirm the existence of a program that for years Iran has denied.

Ralph Peters has some serious concerns about where the Obama administration is going.

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The future of Islam and its absence

Tuesday, February 12th, 2013

Spengler has a new column that points out the coming collapse of Islam as a demographic entity. I have thought for years that Iran, if the population ever succeeds in overthrowing the regime, will abandon Islam as its first priority. Spengler points to a column by David Ignatius that belatedly recognizes a phenomenon that has been noted by others for years.

Something startling is happening in the Muslim world — and no, I don’t mean the Arab Spring or the growth of Islamic fundamentalism. According to a leading demographer, a “sea change” is producing a sharp decline in Muslim fertility rates and a “flight from marriage” among Arab women.

Nicholas Eberstadt, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, documented these findings in two recent papers. They tell a story that contradicts the usual picture of a continuing population explosion in Muslim lands. Population is indeed rising, but if current trends continue, the bulge won’t last long.

The second class status of women in the Muslim world has led to important changes in their beliefs, especially about the religion that oppresses them.

Eberstadt’s first paper was expressively titled “Fertility Decline in the Muslim World: A Veritable Sea-Change, Still Curiously Unnoticed.” Using data for 49 Muslim-majority countries and territories, he found that fertility rates declined an average of 41 percent between 1975-80 and 2005-10, a deeper drop than the 33 percent decline for the world as a whole.

Twenty-two Muslim countries and territories had fertility declines of 50 percent or more. The sharpest drops were in Iran, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Libya, Albania, Qatar and Kuwait, which all recorded declines of 60 percent or more over three decades.

The present fertility rate in Iran is about equal to that of irreligious Europe.

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What is coming ?

Friday, September 14th, 2012

The attacks on American embassies across the middle east, but especially Egypt and Libya, are the harbinger of a new era in that area. With the assistance of the US, including force in Libya, we have brought forces to power that have been disguised by our leftist president and administration as peaceful democrats seeking freedom. They are not. They represent the Muslim Brotherhood and worse. These organizations are radical islamists who seek to return Muslim society to the 7th century of Muhammed in law and policy. There is no precedent in Muslim society for peaceful coexistence with Christian or other religious believers. Islam in the 7th and 8th centuries was spread by conquest. It was stopped France by Charles Martel at Tours in 732, This stopped the northward invasion of Europe from north Africa that surged into Spain and held part of that country for another five hundred years.

The Arabs regrouped and next attacked Byzantium, which fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, This followed a period of turmoil within the world of Islam. The Arabs conquered Palestine but lost it to the Seljuk Turks in 1071. They, in turn, were defeated by the Ottomon turks after being defeated by the Christian crusaders trying to reclaim the Holy Land from the infidel. There was a Mameluke empire for a time composed of Mamelukes, soldier slaves who had been taken from often Christian families of Georgia and other smaller countries to the northwest of the Turks. The entire middle east was involved in chaos for hundreds of years as various factions maneuvered for power.

The Ottomans revived the aggressive instincts of the Muslims and attacked Vienna in 1529, beginning with a siege, the usual tactic against fortified strongholds. They had already conquered most of Hungary and the Danube Valley. They were finally defeated by inadequate logistical support and most of Europe remained Christian.

There is no period in early Islam when advancing the religion by force was not the policy, Peace with Europe after Vienna followed exhaustion of the Muslim armies. They did not stoop fighting but moved on to the Siege of Malta after Vienna. The Knights Hospitalers of Jerusalem had been expelled from the Holy Lands and settled in Rhodes. There, they were expelled by the Siege of Rhodes in 1522 and settled in Malta. Here, they faced another siege by the Turks but prevailed. The Batle of Lepanto, in 1571, ended the Turks invasion of the eastern Mediterranean.

The last attempt at Vienna ended in 1683 and the next encounter between Ottomans and Europeans came with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt.

The present era of conflict between Islam and the west began with the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1920s. The appearance of Sayyid Qutb, who spent time teaching school in 1950s America where he acquired a hatred of western values, even those of a quiet midwestern town in Greeley, Colorado. His influence on the Muslim Brotherhood has been baleful.

The present Obama/Clinton policy toward the middle east has been disastrous. Obama’s speech in Cairo in 2009 set the tone, as did Clinton’s use of the “reset button” as her approach to Russia. These people are unqualified for their positions in government and the amateurism is leading us into a very dangerous phase of history. Our best course, in my opinion, is to develop out energy sources as quickly as possible to free us from the coming turmoil, phase out aid to Islamist regimes and strengthen Israel for the coming test. We will be fortunate if this decade does not end with another Holocaust. I fear we will not be fortunate.

The Battle for Egypt Begins

Sunday, February 20th, 2011

There has been much jubilation over the ouster of President Mubarak and much ridicule at the idea that the Muslim Brotherhood would take over. Well, the Egyptian Revolution ended a week ago with Mubarak’s resignation. Yesterday, the second revolution began with the return from exile of a radical Imam. Sound familiar ?

As I posted yesterday, over a million Egyptians turned out in Tahrir Square last Friday to cheer the vile anti-Semitic Sunni cleric Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who had been exiled by Mubarek, and who espouses the fundamentalist Islamic view that Jews must live as Dhimmis under Islamic control. Instead of accurately reporting the significance of this event, The New York Times whitewashed the cleric as someone who supports a “a pluralistic, multiparty, civil democracy.”

His version ?

Based in Qatar, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi is one of the most influential clerics in Sunni Islam. He currently serves as president of the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFW), and is a highly influential spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qaradawi has twice (in 1976 and 2004) turned down opportunities to serve as the Brotherhood’s highest-ranking leader. His preference, he explains, is to avoid tying himself to “any movement which might constrain my actions, even if this is the Muslim Brotherhood under whose umbrella I grew and which I so defended.

It’s OK, though, because they are secular.

Here is the video of the rally (in Arabic, via Israel Matzav) with the crowd chanting:

“To Jerusalem We go, for us to be the Martyrs? of the Millions.”

Here is the transcript.

We demand that the Egyptian army liberate us from the government, which was formed by Mubarak in the days of his soon-to-be-erased rule. We want a new government, without a single one of the faces that people cannot tolerate anymore. Whenever people see these faces, they remember the injustice, the killing, they remember the invasion of the camels, mules, and horses, as well as the snipers who killed the people.

[…]

A message to our brothers in Palestine: I harbor the hope that just like Allah allowed me to witness the triumph of Egypt, He will allow me to witness the conquest of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and will enable me to preach in the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Oh Allah, allow us to preach in the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

There is a peaceful sentiment. The Al Aqsa Mosque sits atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Another helpful statement:

Sheik Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: The Rafah border crossing will be opened for you. This is what I demand from the Egyptian army and from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

That will open the border to Gaza. Frankly, that makes sense as Gaza was part of Egypt before the 1967 war. It has nothing to do with Palestine. The only problem is with the Hamas terrorists who rule Gaza. This may well be Obama’s Khomeini moment.

One of the most publicized figures outside Egypt in this story the last few weeks is a Google executive who is Egyptian.

One of the western media’s favorite Egyptian rebels is Google executive Wael Ghonim. No surprise there: if you had to choose among radical clerics like al-Qaradawi, hooligans like those who assaulted Lara Logan, and a suave, Westernized Google exec, whom would you want to interview? Ghonim was present on Friday and intended to address the crowd, but he was barred from the platform by al-Qaradawi’s security. He left the stage in distress, “his face hidden by an Egyptian flag.” Is Ghonim Egypt’s Kerensky? Well, at least Kerensky got to rule for a while.

Ghonim is one more proof, as if we needed any more, that brilliance in another field is no guarantee of common sense in politics, especially revolutionary politics. We are now about to move to the next stage, which in the French Revolution ended with the Terror. In Iran, it still goes on.

UPDATE: Here is a more optimistic view.

Afghanistan, Egypt and Obama

Sunday, January 30th, 2011

I have previously posted my opinion that Afghanistan is not worth the cost. I stated my reasons why we should leave here and here and here. Nothing has changed there but a lot is happening elsewhere in the Middle East.

Egypt’s escalating tensions amount to the first real foreign crisis for the Obama administration that it did not inherit. The crisis serves as a test of Obama’s revamped White House operation. Daley, a former Commerce secretary in the Clinton administration, is now running a staff that is briefing Obama regularly on Egypt.

They have handled it badly. This is a very dangerous time for us. The Egyptian Army seems to be siding with the protesters. That may or may not last.

The left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz says that Egyptian army officers in Cairo’s central square have tossed aside their helmets and joined the crowd. “The Army and the people are one,” they chanted. MSNBC’s photoblog shows protesters jubilantly perched on M1A1 tanks. The real significance of these defections is that the army officers would not have done so had they not sensed which way the winds were blowing — in the Egyptian officer corps.

And even as Mubarak tottered, the Saudi king threw his unequivocal backing behind the aging dictator — not hedging like Obama — but the Iranians continued to back the Egyptian protesters. The Saudi exchange tumbled 6.44% on news of unrest from Cairo. Meanwhile, the Voice of America reports that Israel is “extremely concerned” that events in Egypt could mean the end of the peace treaty between the two countries. If Mubarak isn’t finished already, a lot of regional actors are calculating like he might be.

But Washington will not be hurried. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that President Obama will review his Middle Eastern policy after the unrest in Egypt subsides. The future, in whose spaces the administration believed its glories to lie, plans to review its past failures in the same expansive place. Yet time and oil wait for no one. Crude oil prices surged as the markets took the rapid developments in. U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu observed that any disruption to Middle East oil supplies “could actually bring real harm.”

Of course, Mr Chu should not worry as we have wind and solar to take up the slack. Actually, we get our oil from Canada and Mexico but the price of oil shifts with the world’s supply.

The present Obama commitment to Afghanistan is ironic since he promised to bring troops home but he has declared that Iraq was NOT necessary and Afghanistan is. This is slightly crazy. The Iraq invasion was an example of US power being applied in a critical location; right in the middle of the Middle East. Afghanistan is a remote tribal society reachable only through unreliable Pakistan. It has minimal effect on world events. We went there to punish the Taliban for harboring the people who attacked our country. Thousands of them have been killed. We have little of interest there now. We should have left last year.

With a Shi’ite dominated government in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and a Muslim Brotherhood that may keep Egypt in neutral or tacitly accept Teheran’s leadership, how could things possibly get worse?

They can if Saudi Arabia starts to go. And what response can the U.S. offer? With U.S. combat power in landlocked Afghanistan and with the last U.S. combat forces having left Iraq in August 2010, the U.S. will have little on the ground but the State Department. “By October 2011, the US State Department will assume responsibility for training the Iraqi police and this task will largely be carried out by private contractors.” The bulk of American hard power will be locked up in secondary Southwest Asian theater, dependent on Pakistan to even reach the sea with their heavy equipment.

This is not where we want to be. The problem is that Obama and Hillary and the rest of this administration have no concept of strategy.

The Obama administration made fundamental strategic mistakes, whose consequences are now unfolding. As I wrote in the Ten Ships, a post which referenced the Japanese Carrier fleet which made up the strategic center of gravity of the enemy during the Pacific War, the center of gravity in the present crisis was always the Middle East. President Obama, by going after the criminals who “attacked America on 9/11? from their staging base was doing the equivalent of bombing the nameless patch of ocean 200 miles North of Oahu from which Nagumo launched his raid. But he was not going after the enemy center of gravity itself.

For all of its defects the campaign in Iraq was at least in the right place: at the locus of oil, ideology and brutal regimes that are the Middle East. Ideally the campaign in Iraq would have a sent a wave of democratization through the area, undermined the attraction of radical Islam, provided a base from which to physically control oil if necessary. That the campaign failed to attain many of objectives should not obscure the fact that its objectives were valid. It made far more strategic sense than fighting tribesmen in Afghanistan. Ideology, rogue regimes, energy are the three entities which have replaced the “ten ships” of 70 years ago. The means through which these three entities should be engaged ought to be the subject of reasoned debate, whether by military, economic or technological means. But the vital nature of these objectives ought not to be. Neutralize the intellectual appeal of radical Islam, topple the rogue regimes, and ease Western dependence on oil and you win the war. Yet their centrality, and even their existence is what the politicians constantly deny.

Events are unfolding, but they have not yet run their course; things are still continuing to cascade. If the unrest spreads to the point where the Suez and regional oil fall into anti-Western hands, the consequences would be incalculable. The scale of the left’s folly: their insistence on drilling moratoriums, opposition to nuclear power, support of negotiations with dictators at all costs, calls for unilateral disarmament, addiction to debt and their barely disguised virulent anti-Semitism should be too manifest to deny.

Leftism is making common cause with Islamic terrorism. Why ? I don’t really know. Some of it may be the caricature of Jews making money and being good at business. Some may simply be the extension of animosity to Israel extending to all Jews. The people behind Obama are not free of these sentiments. His Justice Department is filled with lawyers who defended terrorists at Guantanamo. Holder seems uninterested in voting rights cases if a black is the offender. He was even unwilling to say that Islamic terrorism was behind 9/11.

Because it will hit them where it hurts, in the lifestyle they somehow thought came from some permanent Western prosperity that was beyond the power of their fecklessness to destroy. It will be interesting to see if anyone can fill up their cars with carbon credits when the oil tankers stop coming or when black gold is marked at $500 a barrel. It is even possible that within a relatively short time the only government left friendly to Washington in the Middle East may be Iraq. There is some irony in that, but it is unlikely to be appreciated.

I would add a bit to this from one of my favorite essays on the topic. It compares Gorbachev to Obama.

Nor are the two men, themselves, remotely comparable in their backgrounds, or political outlook. Gorbachev, for instance, had come up from tractor driver, not through elite schools including Harvard Law; he lacked the narcissism that constantly seeks self-reflection through microphones and cameras, or the sense that everything is about him.

On the other hand, some interesting comparisons could be made between the thuggish party machine of Chicago, which raised Obama as its golden boy; and the thuggish party machine of Moscow, which presented Gorbachev as it’s most attractive face.

Both men have been praised for their wonderful temperaments, and their ability to remain unperturbed by approaching catastrophe. But again, the substance is different, for Gorbachev’s temperament was that of a survivor of many previous catastrophes.

Yet they do have one major thing in common, and that is the belief that, regardless of what the ruler does, the polity he rules must necessarily continue. This is perhaps the most essential, if seldom acknowledged, insight of the post-modern “liberal” mind: that if you take the pillars away, the roof will continue to hover in the air.

In another passage:

There is a corollary of this largely unspoken assumption: that no matter what you do to one part of a machine, the rest of the machine will continue to function normally.

A variant of this is the frequently expressed denial of the law of unintended consequences: the belief that, if the effect you intend is good, the actual effect must be similarly happy.

Very small children, the mad, and certain extinct primitive tribes, have shared in this belief system, but only the fully college-educated liberal has the vocabulary to make it sound plausible.

With an incredible rapidity, America’s status as the world’s pre-eminent superpower is now passing away. This is a function both of the nearly systematic abandonment of U.S. interests and allies overseas, with metastasizing debt and bureaucracy on the home front.

The turmoil in Egypt is a test that, I fear, Obama and his Secretary of State, will not pass.

UPDATE: The situation in Egypt festers with an ambiguous statement by Obama no help. Here is an example of how Reagan handled the Philippine overthrow of Marcos. A very different approach.

UPDATE #2: A column by Charles Krauthammer is indispensable reading today.

Elections will be held. The primary U.S. objective is to guide a transition period that gives secular democrats a chance.

The House of Mubarak is no more. He is 82, reviled and not running for reelection. The only question is who fills the vacuum. There are two principal possibilities: a provisional government of opposition forces, possibly led by Mohamed ElBaradei, or an interim government led by the military.

ElBaradei would be a disaster. As head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), he did more than anyone to make an Iranian nuclear bomb possible, covering for the mullahs for years. (As soon as he left, the IAEA issued a strikingly tough, unvarnished report about the program.)

Worse, ElBaradei has allied himself with the Muslim Brotherhood. Such an alliance is grossly unequal. The Brotherhood has organization, discipline and widespread support. In 2005, it won approximately 20 percent of parliamentary seats. ElBaradei has no constituency of his own, no political base, no political history within Egypt at all.

He has lived abroad for decades. He has less of a residency claim to Egypt than Rahm Emanuel has to Chicago. A man with no constituency allied with a highly organized and powerful political party is nothing but a mouthpiece and a figurehead, a useful idiot whom the Brotherhood will dispense with when it ceases to have need of a cosmopolitan frontman.

The Egyptian military, on the other hand, is the most stable and important institution in the country. It is Western-oriented and rightly suspicious of the Brotherhood. And it is widely respected, carrying the prestige of the 1952 Free Officers Movement that overthrew the monarchy and the 1973 October War that restored Egyptian pride along with the Sinai.

The military is the best vehicle for guiding the country to free elections over the coming months.

El Baradei also attempted to intervene in the 2004 US elections by releasing a letter that alleged US forces had allowed radicals to steal hundreds of pounds of explosives in Iraq by failing to guard the facility. After the election, it was proven that the letter was not true. The man is anti-American and a liar.

Pakistan is an unreliable ally

Saturday, July 3rd, 2010

We have been in Afghanistan for nearly 9 years. We invaded after 2001 and routed the Taliban with a combination of non-Pashtun forces and our own Special Forces and air power. That campaign was a success. Now we are engaged in a nation building and COIN campaign in an area that has never been a nation or even a town. Prior to the Soviet maneuvering which resulted in invasion in 1979, Afghanistan had consisted of a city, Kabul, with a civilized society, and the vast countryside ruled by tribes and hostile to any attempt at central control by Kabul. The rather successful policy by the “central government’ was to leave them alone. Eventually, Soviet forces decided to take control with a series of coups.

The first was in 1971.

The workers started to get organised and became very active in the industrial areas of the country; the demonstrations, which had begun on the campus of the University and in the secondary schools of Kabul, soon spread to the provinces: riots became more and more frequent; the King was openly criticized.

Moscow had a plan ready and in Kabul and army was being infiltrated by the “Parcham” group. A period of transition was necessary before a Marxist government could be established. Someone had to be found, who could, at the same time, be trusted b Moscow and accepted by the Afghan people, in order to replace the King who was gradually loosing his popularity. Only one person met all the requirements, and that was Daoud. After ten years away from the political scene, he was still ambitious and eager to regain power. To achieve this goal, he was to take the King’s place, even if that meant as President of the Republic only. The Russians were in a hurry to put an end to the monarchy, which they considered to be a major obstacle to their objectives.

An agreement was reached in 1971 between two officers belonging to the “Parcham” group (Moscow’s favourite) and Dr. Hassan Sharq who was acting on Daoud’s behalf.

The tragedy of Afghanistan began here but there had never been a real central government. There was Kabul and then the rest of the country. Afghanistan had actually severed relationships with Pakistan in 1961. Pakistan is no friend of a real Afghanistan as an independent country. Afghanistan does have some natural resources and some rudimentary efforts were made to develop them under the Soviets.

The Pashtuns are the dominant tribal group of Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is a major obstacle to any solution of the Afghanistan problem. Pakistan was a political creation at the dissolution of the British control of India. It was poorly done and massive tragedy ensued. Kashmir is one of those mistakes but Pakistan is another in many ways. Perhaps it should have been Pashtunistan except that half the Pashtuns were in Afghanistan, which was about to severe relations with Pakistan.

Pakistan has fomented terrorism in India as part of its Cold War with its neighbor. Much of this is directed at Kashmir but some has been redirected, as in the Mumbai massacre which was originally directed at Kashmir. Pakistan is not a reliable ally.

Countering and Fomenting Insurgencies

In his monograph, Pakistan’s Security Paradox: Countering and Fomenting Insurgencies, Mullick observed what he described as a “duplicitous approach” in Pakistan’s insurgency policy:

* On the one hand, Pakistan has engaged in an effort to counter insurgency (COIN) within its own borders, particularly in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

* On the other hand, Pakistan has been fomenting insurgency (FOIN) across the border in Afghanistan.

* Mullick argued that this policy needs to be considered as part of a coherent Pakistani national security strategy to protect its territorial, economic, and geopolitical interests.

Pakistan is backing the Taliban in Afghanistan and fighting them in Pakistan. Some of this is Pashtun politics.

Mullick argued that Pakistan’s paradoxical COIN/FOIN strategy has undergone several evolutions. Two of these stages hold particular significance for U.S. interests in the region:

* 2001–2008: Pakistan pursued counterinsurgency campaigns against the Pakistan Taliban, Al Qaeda and its affiliates, and separatists in Balochistan. However, Pakistan decided to “selectively target,” and eventually abet, Afghan Taliban, many of whom fled to FATA after the American invasion

* 2009: The Taliban violated a peace deal struck by the government in the Swat Valley and brought their forces within 60 miles of Islamabad. Deciding to regain control over the Valley, Pakistan Army and Special Forces pursued a “hybrid COIN strategy.”

Thus, Pakistan fights when it is threatened but supports the insurgency in Afghanistan, perhaps as a way of redirecting the young militants from its own territory.

Curtis and Tellis questioned whether Pakistan’s shift in emphasis from FOIN to COIN represented a real “paradigm shift” or whether it was merely a transient refinement. Curtis, in particular, objected to the amoral symmetry that Mullick perceives exists between COIN and FOIN in Pakistan’s national security calculus. Pakistan, Tellis further noted, continues to target militant groups selectively, and several prominent networks remain active in Pakistan. These include the Haqqani network based in northern Waziristan, the Hizb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, and the Afghan Taliban. Tellis also emphasized that Pakistan has fomented terrorism in addition to insurgencies and that its efforts with regard to the former have historically been far more effective. To date, there appears to be little change with respect to Pakistan’s support for terrorist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was responsible for the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India..

Pakistan cannot be trusted and, in fact, may constitute an enemy as it drifts toward militant Islam. Turkey is on the same path. We have to be realistic about what is going on. Our natural ally here is India, a society that has chosen modernity and is pursuing education and commercial development, unlike its neighbor and enemy Pakistan.

Obama’s foreign policy

Sunday, April 26th, 2009

We have seen over the past several weeks the Obama approach to foreign policy. He has been on an apology tour from Europe to South America. At the Summit of the Americas conference, he was humiliated by Hugo Chavez when that Venezuelan dictator handed Obama a leftist book that blames all of Latin America’s problems on the bad old USA. Obama, of course, didn’t realize that he was being humiliated, which makes it even worse. Now that the atmospherics are about over, serious issues are coming to a head, especially in Pakistan.

The Pakistani government, a supposedly democratic one is headed by former felon, Asif Ali Zardari, husband of slain leader Benazir Bhutto. Previously known as “Mister 10%”, he has a reputation as a corrupt, but very rich, man. Last fall, the Pakistan government signed a truce with the Taliban that included Sharia law in a large part of the country. It is no surprise that the truce only emboldened the Taliban who now threaten to take over the country with its nuclear arsenal.

Obama will thus have a chance to show his mettle a bit sooner than we feared. Things are happening very fast.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, accused Pakistan this week of “abdicating to the Taleban”, which “poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world”. … Mrs Clinton’s remarks followed a recent deal between Mr Zardari and the Taleban in the Swat Valley, allowing them to establish a fundamentalist enclave in the former tourist area in exchange for laying down their arms.

The Taleban have not disarmed, and this week its fighters poured out of Swat into the neighbouring district of Buner, taking control of government buildings and digging in at strategic positions around the major towns.

I’m sure Hillary’s disapproval will galvanize the Paks to fight back. Obama, no doubt, will give this all serious thought and look pensive. Of course, his peace and apology offensive has not emboldened the Paks who wonder what he will do next to undercut their defenses.

However, the administration itself has been talking about negotiating with the moderate Taliban for some time. Carlotta Gall, writing in the New York Times, said last month that preliminary talks had already begun. “Even as President Obama floated the idea of negotiating with moderate elements of the Taliban, Afghan and foreign officials here said that preliminary discussions with the Taliban leadership were already under way and could be developed into more formal talks with the support of the United States.” While it is difficult to equate the Pakistani agreement with any that Washington is contemplating, the Pakistani experience underscores how badly wrong ‘peace deals’ can go.

Indeed.

Maybe the Paks have learned that we are now supporting al Qeada terrorists in Somalia.

Well, unlike that false urban legend about US sponsoring Islamist terrorists, it’s my sad duty to report that today the US is sponsoring Islamist terrorists. Directly.

I’ve mentioned Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys in the past, but today he officially returned to Somalia to join the US and UN sponsored reconciliation government, but let me recap why his return means that the US is now directly funding terrorists.

Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys was once heavily funded by Osama bin Laden, helped shield the US embassy bombers form justice, and is on the U.S. State Department’s list of designated terrorists:

Designated on November 7, 2001…
Hassan Dahir Aweys

Are you getting this? The U.S. State Department has Aweys on their list of designated terrorists. This means that all of Aweys assets are to be frozen.
But it’s not just the U.S. that has designated Aweys a terrorist. So, too, has the UN:

A U.N. Security Council resolution has designated Aweys as a terrorist
Today Aweys is back in Somalia as part of the new government.
The very same government that is backed by the US:

Does anyone else get the feeling that Obama is more comfortable with our enemies than our allies ? I still remember Jimmy Carter deciding to throw his lot in with Ayatolah Khomeini in Iran and allowed the Shah, an old ally, to be thrown out. At least Iran did not have nuclear weapons, then.